Charles Bradley - Changes (Daptone)

Charles Bradley would be considered a soul great of any era – we should feel mighty blessed that he’s recording and performing in ours. I certainly feel blessed to have witnessed an unforgettable live performance by him in 2013 at Glasgow’s ABC. Illiterate and living in poverty, Bradley was discovered donning a cape, performing as a James Brown impersonator. He’s subsequently made three fantastic R&B LPs for Daptone Records and toured the world. The Charles Bradley Live Experience was sheer joy and pure entertainment, with many tricks borrowed from The Hardest Working Man In Show Business: flailing mike stand, costume changes, synchronized dance routines. A hype man and ridiculously tight soul band brought old-school flavour and backed Bradley. He was the real deal, an irresistible mix of hardened life experience – when he threw his arms open wide and screamed, you believed his joy/longing/heartache/pain – child-like enthusiasm and genuine humility. “I LOOOVE you!” he yelped on more than one occasion, and rather than cynically thinking “I bet you say that to all the crowds”, we collectively blushed and shouted it back at him.

His latest LP Changes is his most varied set, ranging from psychedelic soul (“Change for the World”) to Motown heart-melters (“You Think I Don’t Know But I Know”) to straight-up funk (“Ain’t It A Sin”) to lovely slowies (“Slow Love”). It’s also his most personal album – a tranquil beach and cliff face scene painted by Bradley in 1982 adorns the back cover, along with a dedication to his mother Inez who passed away in 2014. The title track (that rarest of things - a Black Sabbath ballad) was originally inspired by Sabbath’s Bill Ward’s divorce of his first wife; in Bradley’s hands, it becomes a yearning, heartbreaking love letter to his mother: “she was my woman, I loved her so, but it’s too late now, I’ve let her go”. Kitty Empire in the Observer described it as “monumental”, and I can think of no more apt an adjective. (Surely “Changes” should have closed Side A? I always require a breather when it’s finished).

My vinyl edition of the album also comes with a bonus disc of ace instrumental versions which bring into clear focus the exemplary playing (courtesy of members of the Menahan Street Band and Budos Band) and the breadth of the material. The version of “Change for the World”, renamed “Revelations”, is particularly fierce.